Publishing Monday: the editing process

This week on this blog is going to be special! Sandra Gulland, author of the bestselling Josephine B. trilogy will be interviewed on Friday about the process of writing her newest novel, Mistress of the Sun. On top of that, we’ll be giving away a copy of Mistress of the Sun to one lucky blog commenter! For the creatively inclined, Sandra has a wonderful blog where she writes about her writing process—highly recommended.

My last Creativity Friday post covered what I call 4 am epiphanies—those sudden “roadmap for the soul” realizations that wake you up in the middle of the night. I wrote about a recent one I had. (For a view of another artist-author’s epiphanies, jump over to Joanna Colbert’s Gaian Tarot blog.) Though I wasn’t very specific with my details, a good portion of my recent epiphanies have to do with my current book proposal-under-development. Which, for those of you who follow me on Twitter or on Facebook, know that I sent the first draft of to my literary agent right before I left on vacation.

That brings me to my subject for today, which is oh-so-important: the editing process.

Just about all book proposals need to be edited before they’re sent out into the publishing world. And mine was no different—soon after my return from vacation, I heard back from my agent about the next steps for my book proposal. At this early stage of the game, what needs to be done is more akin to shaping a sculpture than line edits. I’ve got my work ahead of me!

So here’s what I’m working on now:

1. Lots of research. And this is on top of all the research I’ve already completed.

2. Interviewing experts to support my book’s premise. In other words, research isn’t enough: I need fresh material. In a serendipitious stroke of fate, I’ve already received leads and am following up already.

3. And more writing and editing, writing and editing. Yup, even after all the work I’ve already done!

So I’m torn between exhaustion and exhilaration. Exhaustion, because I work very hard on my book proposals; exhilaration, because the direction the book will be traveling to is a place I was intimidated to visit—until my agent intervened in the best possible way.

It’s going to be a lot of work, though I’m fortunate to have the book’s skeleton in place. But, in this somewhat hostile publishing climate, it’s best to have as strong a book proposal as possible. And I’ve been in the biz long enough to know that this is part of the process for creating a book.

In closing, I leave you another author’s experience of the editing process. This ersatz music video was created by author Lara Zielin, whose YA novel debut will be published this August from Putnam. It’s very funny. In it, she writes. She sings. She frolics in meadows and in the rain.

(Hmmm, for my next book video maybe I need a meadow? And some weather action?)

Lara’s video comes by way of agent Kristin Nelson’s Pub Rants, one of my favorite publishing blogs. Oh, and don’t forget: Mistress of the Sun interview and giveaway this Friday! It’s going to be good.

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